[Music]
you
we all have the ability to transform
ourselves in one way or another but
first you have to be willing to venture
into the unfamiliar and to get there it
usually requires having to step past
certain boundaries boundaries that you
think exists I’m not gonna tell you
about the work that I do as a
photographer necessarily but I want to
speak a little bit about my personal
journey my process and some of these
things I’ve uncovered as a result of
this when I was 14 I lost something that
at the time I didn’t realize would
impact in my life from my identity and
such a tremendous way I started to lose
my hair to a condition called alopecia
and for those of you that might not be
familiar it’s an autoimmune disease
where your body basically thinks that
your hair is an enemy and it’s at accent
so it doesn’t grow or you could imagine
how traumatic that was at that age to
lose something so familiar and so
definitive of this idea of femininity
and of course you know what is expected
of a young normal healthy girl at that
age ironically the most harmful thing
about the condition wasn’t from the
actual condition itself but for my
encounters with other people I was
heckled throughout my adolescence and
pretty much rights into adulthood and I
was made to feel ashamed for being
visibly different from other girls this
forcibly pushed me outside of that
boundary of what was considered normal
for something I had absolutely no
control over
of course my life wasn’t all bad I was
lucky to grow up in st. Vincent’s I live
in Eddie Beach I had a great group of
friends and my parents had all both
recognized a certain I guess creative
impulses in me from a young age and my
dad did his best to nurture this out of
me and it was through that nurturing
that I had
gradually found men we’re working in
photography I taught myself how to use a
camera and I just expose myself to as
many things as possible and I was able
to figure out how to redirect all of
that frustration I was feeling at the
time and expressed myself in ways that I
couldn’t articulate with words and that
boundary that I felt originally closing
in was beginning to expand again because
I had basically figured out how to use
my imagination to escape I became really
interested and trying to document my
everyday experiences at the time a lot
of the imagery I was being exposed to
they were much more commercial you know
they were very tor eccentric and they
didn’t feel like an authentic
representation of the Caribbean island
that I grew up on and the reality that I
was actually living at that time and I
sort of made it my agenda to make images
that count to that somehow and my work
ended up taking on a very cinematic tone
to create this feeling of imminence as
though something was always in the edge
of happening and out to that emerge a
type of aesthetic or you could say was a
little bit dark but I wanted to figure
out some how to translate those emotions
into the work to create this tense
feeling and even with that I tried to
put something familiar in its something
that could connect people I think when
we see something familiar of ourselves
in the image it becomes much easier for
us to connect to that thing and then
that really does open up a lot of
possibilities this is an image I did in
2004 called the garden and it’s a
photograph of my grandmother my great
aunt sharing a bed together it was a
very familiar sensibility in this I
think’s a lot of Caribbean people you
know very stereotypical floral bedsheets
type of body language that exists
between the women but this thing that
resonates to me about this image is that
there’s an unspoken boundary between
them they’re facing away from each other
and a lot of my earlier work tries to
investigate this kind of tension whether
it’s between subjects or between myself
and her subjects I think there’s value
in going into these uncomfortable places
and at the time I understood that even
if it was within my own home
I had to step past certain boundaries to
get there because it was helping me to
redefine a lot of the attitudes I had
towards myself and towards my
environment at the time boundaries exist
everywhere whether it’s in our personal
lives the types of relationships we have
with each other and even in a more
abstract sense even in photographs when
I was learning to compose an image for
the first time one of the things that
pretty much occurred to me was that
photography is not just about what you
put within an image but also what you
choose to leave out to that frame and
when I understood that it really created
a solid foundation how I approached a
lot of my images to dates
and how people can interpret things so
when you think about it even within a
photograph there there’s a boundary that
frame of an image is the boundary and
what we should be considering when we
look at a photograph is not just what we
see within that frame but everything
that isn’t there so when you think about
it it’s very similar to living on an
island we are aware of only so much but
when you step to that boundaries edge
that’s shoreline and you can look out
towards the horizon even though you
might not necessarily be aware of
everything beyond the certain points
there is that feeling of hopefulness of
possibility of room for your imagination
to wonder and I think it’s the same
thing with images there should be room
beyond that frame for your imagination
to go somewhere there’s a court that I
really liked by Christopher cozier a
Trinidadian artist and he said an island
is a place from which people look out
and I know it seems like a really
simplistic statement to make but this
thing that resonates to me about it is
that it does speak to this notion of a
boundary or a point in which you feel as
though you can’t go any further but it’s
really that awareness of the shoreline
that provokes this idea of our
limitations who can we become beyond
that boundary of the shoreline recently
my work has actually taken me into the
sea so beyond that boundary
I’d like to think of what I’m doing as
looking back at an island but from a
different vantage points trying to gain
a deeper understanding of myself of
ourselves and I think I’m still very
much trying to search for that familiar
thing that universal thing that connects
all of us but I’m doing it in even more
unfamiliar space
I started this series in 2015 called
circa no future and it really became a
turning point in the imagery I was doing
because prior to that especially with my
underwater work I was just experimenting
and observing and you know with all
sorts of random things but it was really
first time I introduced that human
elements into the work and one
specifically observing people passed
that boundary of that shoreline and how
they they fell into more comfortable
ways of being themselves more vulnerable
winds now this work looks at a very
typical or very familiar scene I think a
lot of us are customed to seeing at the
beach with these young black adolescent
boys jumping off of boats or rocks or
jetties but it’s focused on a very
specific moment that happens I think
we’re all accustomed to see in that
moment above water where they’re very
hyper masculine and there’s a
performance so they’re showing off but
there’s a point where they break through
that surface and this seemed to be
suspended in this states of
vulnerability that vulnerability really
interests me because it’s a group of
familiar guys acting in this very
unfamiliar way you could see that on
this surface I have nothing in common
with these boys in a very superficial
way but losing my hair actually gave me
the strange access to these moments
because from a distance these boys would
assume that I was a boy as well swimming
up to them because they were only seen
the top of my head in the water and what
that actually gave me was like a very
temporary glimpse into a whole other
world I noticed a type of sensitivity
and camaraderie that they were
expressing amongst each other and it’s
something you don’t get to see typically
as a woman especially on land because
you know teenage boys can always be so
guarded of course that moment that they
realize I was a
the dynamic completely change and you
know they felt betrayed and then they
went into performance again but my
objective was always to try and capture
that moments of vulnerability and one of
the great things about photography is
that you are able to sort of freeze
these moments you’re able to slow down a
sequence and make these invisible
moments visible so I started documenting
them above the water and going right
through right through the surface and
sort of stumbled across this moment and
you know I spent some time trying to
capture it and what occurred to me was
that their boundary was actually that
surface of the water and everything
above everything back and land those
constructs that they were battling with
before it did not exist in that space
and I think there’s something there to
take note to self I think it’s really
fascinating that we are surrounded by
all of this water yet due to the
physical limitations about humanists of
our bodies we can’t really completely
occupy that space but there is a sort of
temporary ideal of who we can become in
the sea even if it’s for brief moments
so if we don’t belong there and we
belong here
how can we take that temporary
experience and apply it our societies
and land to make ourselves more
emotionally vulnerable more
understanding tolerant compassionate
coming out of that experience with these
boys one of the big questions that
really starts to ask myself was is it
possible for us to view ourselves void
of these social constructs that create
these boundaries between us and within
us is there a way for us to dissolve
this construct of gender class race
sexuality country of origin whatever and
what occurred to me was that people were
the ones that created these boundaries
this sea has no agenda rich or poor it
will swallow you
so in a sense when you think about it
the ocean really is the one true
Democratic space that exists and as
Caribbean islands we are surrounded by
it so it really is one of our greatest
resources not just from the obvious
sustainable points of view but the sort
of social implications of what it could
mean for us this image is called is at a
boy and it’s somewhat of a humorous
title and it is a bit of clear words but
there’s a serious underlying discussion
that it addresses it references the idea
of gender and sexuality and the type of
assumptions people can make based on
physical attributes now obviously this
is something very closely related to my
own experiences growing up with alopecia
and more specifically this image really
came out you know it was inspired by
these boys and that initial interaction
I had with them it shows an image of my
head on the left and a buoy or a boy on
the right and it’s meant to make you
look twice and question the validity of
your own perceptions what you think you
see versus the actual reality of a
situation so just like you might go to
the beach and see a buoy floating in the
water and you could mistake it for a
person swimming there’s a way that we
can also objectify people based on a
lack of adequate information or
understanding one of the great things
about working with this sea is that it
does have this way that it can run their
body so seem very ambiguous it does
dissolve that construct of gender I
actually showed this piece earlier this
year the Jamaican biennial the National
Gallery and a critic did a review on all
their work and he spoke a little bit
about this piece and he kept on
referring to the person the image as a
man and that’s him he was just a
testament of how successful the work
actually was is it a man or a woman in
the water
does it matter the boundary in this
image actually lies between you the
viewer and the image it’s within your
own perceptions and what you’re willing
to accept is acceptable I took a simple
routine of just swimming daily and I use
photography to
as a witness to different experiences I
was having in the sea and I hope that
people are somehow able to find
something familiar of themselves in my
work and connect to that and maybe it
will instill some sort of desire to step
past your own boundaries my photography
has always been an exploration of my own
humanity and it’s very personal and very
visceral response to the world that I
live in I’m not a scientist and I don’t
try to make any assertions as a
scientist but what I have uncovered from
these Watts
explorations is that we all have the
ability in one way or another to
transform our thinking and the types of
relationships we could have with each
other and it doesn’t matter if you’re
the photographer this subject to the
viewer
so ask yourself where are your
boundaries and if you could step past
those boundaries or jump past them or
swim past them or whatever and it could
look back at yourself what would you see
who do you think you could become are
you willing to venture into that
unfamiliar territory and move past those
boundaries that you think exist whether
they’ve been forced on you or their
constructive your own minor environment
I think there’s somebody inside of all
of us who’s willing to take that jump
and this is actually what it looks like
on the other side thank you
[Applause]
you
we all have the ability to transform
ourselves in one way or another but
first you have to be willing to venture
into the unfamiliar and to get there it
usually requires having to step past
certain boundaries boundaries that you
think exists I’m not gonna tell you
about the work that I do as a
photographer necessarily but I want to
speak a little bit about my personal
journey my process and some of these
things I’ve uncovered as a result of
this when I was 14 I lost something that
at the time I didn’t realize would
impact in my life from my identity and
such a tremendous way I started to lose
my hair to a condition called alopecia
and for those of you that might not be
familiar it’s an autoimmune disease
where your body basically thinks that
your hair is an enemy and it’s at accent
so it doesn’t grow or you could imagine
how traumatic that was at that age to
lose something so familiar and so
definitive of this idea of femininity
and of course you know what is expected
of a young normal healthy girl at that
age ironically the most harmful thing
about the condition wasn’t from the
actual condition itself but for my
encounters with other people I was
heckled throughout my adolescence and
pretty much rights into adulthood and I
was made to feel ashamed for being
visibly different from other girls this
forcibly pushed me outside of that
boundary of what was considered normal
for something I had absolutely no
control over
of course my life wasn’t all bad I was
lucky to grow up in st. Vincent’s I live
in Eddie Beach I had a great group of
friends and my parents had all both
recognized a certain I guess creative
impulses in me from a young age and my
dad did his best to nurture this out of
me and it was through that nurturing
that I had
gradually found men we’re working in
photography I taught myself how to use a
camera and I just expose myself to as
many things as possible and I was able
to figure out how to redirect all of
that frustration I was feeling at the
time and expressed myself in ways that I
couldn’t articulate with words and that
boundary that I felt originally closing
in was beginning to expand again because
I had basically figured out how to use
my imagination to escape I became really
interested and trying to document my
everyday experiences at the time a lot
of the imagery I was being exposed to
they were much more commercial you know
they were very tor eccentric and they
didn’t feel like an authentic
representation of the Caribbean island
that I grew up on and the reality that I
was actually living at that time and I
sort of made it my agenda to make images
that count to that somehow and my work
ended up taking on a very cinematic tone
to create this feeling of imminence as
though something was always in the edge
of happening and out to that emerge a
type of aesthetic or you could say was a
little bit dark but I wanted to figure
out some how to translate those emotions
into the work to create this tense
feeling and even with that I tried to
put something familiar in its something
that could connect people I think when
we see something familiar of ourselves
in the image it becomes much easier for
us to connect to that thing and then
that really does open up a lot of
possibilities this is an image I did in
2004 called the garden and it’s a
photograph of my grandmother my great
aunt sharing a bed together it was a
very familiar sensibility in this I
think’s a lot of Caribbean people you
know very stereotypical floral bedsheets
type of body language that exists
between the women but this thing that
resonates to me about this image is that
there’s an unspoken boundary between
them they’re facing away from each other
and a lot of my earlier work tries to
investigate this kind of tension whether
it’s between subjects or between myself
and her subjects I think there’s value
in going into these uncomfortable places
and at the time I understood that even
if it was within my own home
I had to step past certain boundaries to
get there because it was helping me to
redefine a lot of the attitudes I had
towards myself and towards my
environment at the time boundaries exist
everywhere whether it’s in our personal
lives the types of relationships we have
with each other and even in a more
abstract sense even in photographs when
I was learning to compose an image for
the first time one of the things that
pretty much occurred to me was that
photography is not just about what you
put within an image but also what you
choose to leave out to that frame and
when I understood that it really created
a solid foundation how I approached a
lot of my images to dates
and how people can interpret things so
when you think about it even within a
photograph there there’s a boundary that
frame of an image is the boundary and
what we should be considering when we
look at a photograph is not just what we
see within that frame but everything
that isn’t there so when you think about
it it’s very similar to living on an
island we are aware of only so much but
when you step to that boundaries edge
that’s shoreline and you can look out
towards the horizon even though you
might not necessarily be aware of
everything beyond the certain points
there is that feeling of hopefulness of
possibility of room for your imagination
to wonder and I think it’s the same
thing with images there should be room
beyond that frame for your imagination
to go somewhere there’s a court that I
really liked by Christopher cozier a
Trinidadian artist and he said an island
is a place from which people look out
and I know it seems like a really
simplistic statement to make but this
thing that resonates to me about it is
that it does speak to this notion of a
boundary or a point in which you feel as
though you can’t go any further but it’s
really that awareness of the shoreline
that provokes this idea of our
limitations who can we become beyond
that boundary of the shoreline recently
my work has actually taken me into the
sea so beyond that boundary
I’d like to think of what I’m doing as
looking back at an island but from a
different vantage points trying to gain
a deeper understanding of myself of
ourselves and I think I’m still very
much trying to search for that familiar
thing that universal thing that connects
all of us but I’m doing it in even more
unfamiliar space
I started this series in 2015 called
circa no future and it really became a
turning point in the imagery I was doing
because prior to that especially with my
underwater work I was just experimenting
and observing and you know with all
sorts of random things but it was really
first time I introduced that human
elements into the work and one
specifically observing people passed
that boundary of that shoreline and how
they they fell into more comfortable
ways of being themselves more vulnerable
winds now this work looks at a very
typical or very familiar scene I think a
lot of us are customed to seeing at the
beach with these young black adolescent
boys jumping off of boats or rocks or
jetties but it’s focused on a very
specific moment that happens I think
we’re all accustomed to see in that
moment above water where they’re very
hyper masculine and there’s a
performance so they’re showing off but
there’s a point where they break through
that surface and this seemed to be
suspended in this states of
vulnerability that vulnerability really
interests me because it’s a group of
familiar guys acting in this very
unfamiliar way you could see that on
this surface I have nothing in common
with these boys in a very superficial
way but losing my hair actually gave me
the strange access to these moments
because from a distance these boys would
assume that I was a boy as well swimming
up to them because they were only seen
the top of my head in the water and what
that actually gave me was like a very
temporary glimpse into a whole other
world I noticed a type of sensitivity
and camaraderie that they were
expressing amongst each other and it’s
something you don’t get to see typically
as a woman especially on land because
you know teenage boys can always be so
guarded of course that moment that they
realize I was a
the dynamic completely change and you
know they felt betrayed and then they
went into performance again but my
objective was always to try and capture
that moments of vulnerability and one of
the great things about photography is
that you are able to sort of freeze
these moments you’re able to slow down a
sequence and make these invisible
moments visible so I started documenting
them above the water and going right
through right through the surface and
sort of stumbled across this moment and
you know I spent some time trying to
capture it and what occurred to me was
that their boundary was actually that
surface of the water and everything
above everything back and land those
constructs that they were battling with
before it did not exist in that space
and I think there’s something there to
take note to self I think it’s really
fascinating that we are surrounded by
all of this water yet due to the
physical limitations about humanists of
our bodies we can’t really completely
occupy that space but there is a sort of
temporary ideal of who we can become in
the sea even if it’s for brief moments
so if we don’t belong there and we
belong here
how can we take that temporary
experience and apply it our societies
and land to make ourselves more
emotionally vulnerable more
understanding tolerant compassionate
coming out of that experience with these
boys one of the big questions that
really starts to ask myself was is it
possible for us to view ourselves void
of these social constructs that create
these boundaries between us and within
us is there a way for us to dissolve
this construct of gender class race
sexuality country of origin whatever and
what occurred to me was that people were
the ones that created these boundaries
this sea has no agenda rich or poor it
will swallow you
so in a sense when you think about it
the ocean really is the one true
Democratic space that exists and as
Caribbean islands we are surrounded by
it so it really is one of our greatest
resources not just from the obvious
sustainable points of view but the sort
of social implications of what it could
mean for us this image is called is at a
boy and it’s somewhat of a humorous
title and it is a bit of clear words but
there’s a serious underlying discussion
that it addresses it references the idea
of gender and sexuality and the type of
assumptions people can make based on
physical attributes now obviously this
is something very closely related to my
own experiences growing up with alopecia
and more specifically this image really
came out you know it was inspired by
these boys and that initial interaction
I had with them it shows an image of my
head on the left and a buoy or a boy on
the right and it’s meant to make you
look twice and question the validity of
your own perceptions what you think you
see versus the actual reality of a
situation so just like you might go to
the beach and see a buoy floating in the
water and you could mistake it for a
person swimming there’s a way that we
can also objectify people based on a
lack of adequate information or
understanding one of the great things
about working with this sea is that it
does have this way that it can run their
body so seem very ambiguous it does
dissolve that construct of gender I
actually showed this piece earlier this
year the Jamaican biennial the National
Gallery and a critic did a review on all
their work and he spoke a little bit
about this piece and he kept on
referring to the person the image as a
man and that’s him he was just a
testament of how successful the work
actually was is it a man or a woman in
the water
does it matter the boundary in this
image actually lies between you the
viewer and the image it’s within your
own perceptions and what you’re willing
to accept is acceptable I took a simple
routine of just swimming daily and I use
photography to
as a witness to different experiences I
was having in the sea and I hope that
people are somehow able to find
something familiar of themselves in my
work and connect to that and maybe it
will instill some sort of desire to step
past your own boundaries my photography
has always been an exploration of my own
humanity and it’s very personal and very
visceral response to the world that I
live in I’m not a scientist and I don’t
try to make any assertions as a
scientist but what I have uncovered from
these Watts
explorations is that we all have the
ability in one way or another to
transform our thinking and the types of
relationships we could have with each
other and it doesn’t matter if you’re
the photographer this subject to the
viewer
so ask yourself where are your
boundaries and if you could step past
those boundaries or jump past them or
swim past them or whatever and it could
look back at yourself what would you see
who do you think you could become are
you willing to venture into that
unfamiliar territory and move past those
boundaries that you think exist whether
they’ve been forced on you or their
constructive your own minor environment
I think there’s somebody inside of all
of us who’s willing to take that jump
and this is actually what it looks like
on the other side thank you
[Applause]
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